


...But Home Is Nowhere

by kat_fanfic



Series: A Fire Inside [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: AND ISAAC, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Derek Feels, Derek Is Emotionally Crippled, Drama, M/M, Not Finale Compliant, Pack Dynamics, Pre-Slash, Stiles is BAMF And A Damsel In Distress, slightly AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-15
Updated: 2012-08-15
Packaged: 2017-11-12 07:02:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/488029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kat_fanfic/pseuds/kat_fanfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is surprisingly easy, for three determined wolfs to force their way into the Argent’s house.</p>
            </blockquote>





	...But Home Is Nowhere

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to tmzcori and mamoru for the quick beta! All remaining mistakes are mine alone.

It’s only later that the despair overwhelms him. The pain hovering just beneath the surface is always there, always gnawing at his insides. It surges upwards in a sudden, devastating wave that leaves him crippled and broken. 

Betrayal mixes with the all-consuming guilt, the irrevocable knowledge that it was _his damn fault_. Every moment he spends in the burned down carcass of his former life, he feels more of his humanity slip away in small increments. It’s taken over by boiling rage and cold, cold despondency that sucks the life from him and leaves him an empty shell that the wolf has to fill with his growls and his posturing and his inability to emote and share and _think_.

He stares at his hands for a long time, tries to find something wrong with them. He turns them around and around, changes back and forth between fingers and claws, cataloging everything about them. But there is nothing there, nothing to take the blame. For shifter hands, they are perfectly normal. 

Yet they can’t be, because everything they touch crumbles to dust, so the only explanation is that there is something wrong with him, _has to be_ something terribly wrong within Derek Hale that kills and harms and distorts souls. Because _how else could there be only death and destruction wherever he goes and why else would he live through hell if not as punishment for past sins?_

Somewhere, deep in the recesses of his mind, Derek can feel his personhood seep away through the cracks of his splintered subconscious. Every hope and dream he’d ever harbored of a normal life is fizzling out like cheap sparklers, leaving behind only the charred remains of what was once healthy and thriving.

He stumbles blindly through the darkened woods, time non-existent. Peter’s words are echoing endlessly in his head. Trust, it all comes down to trust. He fights down the wolf with the last vestiges of his rationality, more out of habit than out of a real desire not to lose himself in the other. 

_Trust_. 

Such a small word for something that can lead to salvation and perdition both. He’s only ever had it used against him, can still hear his mother whisper _I’ll always be there for you_ as he suffers through his first transformation, the pain of it startling and unfamiliar and addicting. He can hear his fathers firm conviction as he shakes hands with the big man that smells like gun oil, silver and death – the Hunter named Henry Venator that assured the Hales that they’d be safe in Beacon Hills as long as they played by the rules. 

Apparently, for Hunters ‘cheating’ means mass murder. It’d be funny, in a macabre sort of way, if not for the sick feeling that settles in Derek’s belly at the mere thought of intimacy. Kate’s smiling face flashes in front of his eyes, no matter how tightly he squeezes them shut, saturated with the imagined smell of singed flesh and mortality.

“Shit, Derek, what the fuck?”

The voice should startle him, should awaken every survival instinct left in him, but it seems like they have abandoned him, along with the last single shred of sanity that he managed to cling to after the fire; the one that smelled like Laura for a few precious years, and that had to take on the cadaverous odor of revenge when she was ripped apart, the proverbial sacrificial lamb for his insane Uncle’s rise to power.

He looks up slowly, eye-contact about the only concession he is willing to make for the one that lets history repeat itself so readily. How he’d love to be condescendingly arrogant, let a little bit show of what it felt like to be the involuntary Judas for his whole pack, but he lacks the energy to do so.

Scott is still staring at him as if he doubts Derek’s sanity. Considering he just found his Alpha curled up into a little ball in the middle of the woods, he isn’t far removed. 

“I’ve been looking for you for hours!” His exasperation is refreshing, it reminds Derek of a time when there was something other than desolation in his heart. “You have got to come with me right away! It’s Gerard. The Hunters… the Hunters have them. They have Boyd and Erica.”

Derek can’t help it. The manic laughter bubbles up in him and he lets it rise and explode in Scott’s face. Startled, the Beta takes a step back, but his chin is still tilted in that certain way that always means trouble.

Derek slowly uncurls himself, drawn to the honest emotion that Scott exudes, even if it is mostly stubbornness with a hint of real desperation. It doesn’t ring true with what he’s been told. Derek frowns, curiosity peaked in an abstract better-than-lying-in-the-dirt way.

His voice, when he can finally convince himself to use it, is rough. “Why would I care?”

“What do you mean?” Scott sputters, honest confusion bleeding into his tone of belligerence. “They need your help, Derek, they’re part of _your_ pack. You were the one that even got them in this situation in the first place. Doesn’t that mean anything?”

Strangely enough, there is a hint of bitterness in the back of his throat. “They’re not anymore. They have made their choice.”

Scott makes a sound that is half groan, half whimper and Derek gets another whiff of his urgent desire to _do something_. The hollow feeling in his chest recedes a little at that, life bleeding back into him in small increments, feeding off of his Beta’s vivaciousness like a leech sucking blood.

He’s on his feet so fast that Scott stumbles back, landing on his ass, legs all akimbo. Any satisfaction Derek would have felt at the sight is overpowered by returning sensory input. “Stiles?” he murmurs, and it’s not a question, not really, but Scott answers it anyway.

“I think Gerard has him, too.”

Derek is moving before Scott has made it off the ground, changing into the much-faster wolf-form instantly. There is no danger now, for him to get lost in it. A moment later, he feels Scott join him, also wolfed out, and at the edge of the forest, Isaac flows from the shadows like a ghost. Together, they run.

 

* * * * 

It is surprisingly easy, for three determined wolfs to force their way into the Argent’s house.

Derek is vaguely aware of Allison’s horrified screams as he rips into Chris like he’s made out of paper, but he pays it no mind. There is a peculiar smell in the air, one that makes his skin tighten and his strength grow. It reeks of suffering in the Hunter’s home and from the way they tear into flesh and bone, Scott and Isaac smell it too.

Something is hitting him in the back, wolfsbane bullets most likely, but even the burning pain of their poison is hardly more than an afterthought. There are others there, other hunters that stink of fear and conviction, but none of them is a match for Derek’s wolf. 

He can feel Isaac trying to keep close, but the younger one is distracted by his desire to free their captured pack-mates. Derek lets him be, his entire focus is on getting where he needs to go. _Basement_ it whispers through his entire being, so he flings away any and all obstacles, vaguely satisfied when bones break and splinter underneath the force of his single-mindedness.

He makes his way to the stairs, lips curling in amused anticipation. He breaks into the single room by taking apart the door, flinging it open in a dramatic gesture worthy of any white-steeded hero. If he is going to do the whole saving-the-damsel-in-distress thing for Stiles, he’s going to do it right. 

“I thought it’d be you.” Gerard’s oily voice slithers through the dimly-lit room, his hands gliding over Stiles’ bared throat in the mimicry of a caress, all the more threatening by the lack of a weapon in his hands. There is something off about the man, has been from the start, but now it’s clearer, more tangible, as if a fog is lifted from around him.

Derek twitches his nose, head tilting as he tries to put a name to it. Without thinking, he takes a half step forward, but Gerard matches his movement by tightening his hold on a trembling Stiles and it’s then that Derek notices the dark stains on his shirt.

“Ah, ah, ah,” Gerard says almost pleasantly, ignoring Derek’s involuntary growl. “Now, we wouldn’t want you to do something stupid now, huh, wolf? 

Derek’s gaze rests on Stiles’ face, on the bruises that are forming on his cheek and neck and on the rivulet of blood that trickles from his nose. “I’m okay,” he mouths, even as his nostrils flare in pain.

They’re at a standstill. The fighting noises above have ceased and out of the corner of his eye, he can see Scott hover at the top of the stairs. Derek wills him to stay away, never once taking his focus off Gerard. The old Hunter is playing for time, and clearly it’s on his side. Derek can already feel the wolfsbane weakening him as it seeps into his bloodstream, and still he can’t make himself move. There are a lot of ways to kill a human quickly and efficiently, even a Hunter, but none of them guarantee for Stiles’ safety. 

For some reason, that is the only thing that wrings _something_ out of his destroyed psyche. Derek pushes that disturbing realization as far into the back of his mind as he can, to rest there along with the deeply buried fantasies of running into a wall of fire, of melting skin and oblivion and peace.

“You don’t want him,” he says, shifting his weight almost imperceptibly. His stance isn’t as firm as he’d like it to be. The warmth trickling down his back is accentuated by the lines of fire spreading out from the points of entry in his back, and he knows that he’s running out of time already.

Gerard’s smile is disturbingly bright. “No, I don’t. And still I have him. What does that tell you?”

Derek is slowly losing the feeling in his fingers. One by one, the claws are retracting against his will. He is becoming as vulnerable to Gerard as Stiles is, healing powers sizzling away under the force of the wolfsbane while he is trapped in a limbo of indecision. 

There is no way out for Gerard, not alive. He’s smart enough to know that, and smart enough to have a back-up plan. As soon as he thinks that, as if on cue, there is a commotion upstairs, yelling and gunshots, growls and dull thuds, nothing to determine for either of them how it’s going. 

There is a single moment when the Hunter’s attention wavers, only a little, but there is also something in the way his eyes glitter that halts Derek’s movement. What he’d thought to be madness is something else entirely and he swallows down bile at the glimpse of pure evil he gets. It makes him hesitate, makes his gut clench in fear for the fragile human trapped in its clutches and so he watches and glowers and at last, it’s Stiles that saves himself. One second he looks as terrified as he should be, and the next he jumps into motion like the awkward teenager Derek met only a few months ago was an elaborate act – all sharp, hard movements, efficient in a way that Derek has only ever seen in trained humans. 

With Gerard having been a Hunter all his life – even one that relied more on cunning than on physical prowess – it is a surprise that it works. Stiles seems to agree, as he comes to stand on a motionless Gerard like a boxer about to receive the championship belt. 

Slowly turning around, his lips quirk in something akin to amusement. “Dad gave me lessons.”

Derek nods and chooses to ignore how Stiles is trembling as if coming apart at the seams. “You okay?” he asks instead. 

“Psh, yeah,” Stiles says, irony dripping off his words. “I get kidnapped by evil psychopaths all the time, you see? And hey, what’s a little manhandling amongst regular Muggels, when upstairs there’s mayhem and bloodshed between Hunters and fucking werewolves and _yes_! I am absolutely _fine_!”

He doesn’t know what to say to that, so he chooses to stay silent. Stiles turns away as a blush creeps up his cheeks and Derek almost misses the mumbled “Thanks”. 

At last there is someone coming down the stairs and he’s moving on impulse, shoving Stiles into the corner farthest away from the destroyed door, crouching down in front of him in a defensive stance that he knows he won’t be able to hold long, not with the way his muscles shake under the strain already. 

It’s with equal parts relief and trepidation that he sees Scott appearing, along with Boyd and Erica. Isaac is suspiciously absent. 

From behind him, Stiles gives him a shove that almost sends him to his knees and squeezes past. “Ugh, you’re wet,” he murmurs and Derek is glad for the dim lighting. He grunts in reply, adrenaline decomposing and leaving a foul taste in the back of his throat and inexorably shaking limbs in its wake. 

“Bind him,” he says, nodding towards the still unconscious Gerard. “Don’t forget the gag.” He makes sure that Erica follows his orders correctly and then he turns to the boys. 

“They’re all alive and mostly unharmed. A few flesh-wounds and a couple of broken bones, nothing worse,” Boyd reports, unprompted. “But. It’s Isaac. He’s been shot.” The _It’s bad_ stays silent.

In a way, Derek welcomes the cold ball of dread in his gut, lets it fill him up with something other than resignation. “You left him alone up there?” 

Boyd’s eyes flicker to Scott. Derek scowls, already moving up the stairs with Stiles hot at his heels. 

“They’re all tied up!” Scott protests as he’s coming up the stair as well. “Even Allison--!” 

He cuts himself off as Derek comes to a sudden stop at the entrance to the main room. Allison, it seems, has more than a few tricks up her – admittedly bloody – sleeves. She is very much _not_ tied up and aiming a small handgun at a prone Isaac. 

Derek takes in the scene, notices that Isaac is barely conscious and how Allison’s stance seems frozen, as if her resolve is all that keeps her on her feet. It probably is. Derek knows the feeling very well.

In the corner, he can see a battered but awake Chris lying propped up against the wall, still bound. He wonders absently why she hasn’t freed him as well, but dismisses it as irrelevant. 

“Let him go,” he says and steps in front of the gun with a casual air, maneuvering around Stiles’ attempt to hold him back. “It’s me you want to see dead, no-one else.”

Her lips pull back into a satisfied smirk. “Why stop with you?”

Stiles lets out a groan of dismay. “Oh my god, can we not kill each other, please? Allison, do you even know what happened that night, huh? Has grandpa told you what your mother was doing the night she was bitten?”

“She was doing nothing,” Allison spits out, venom in her voice. “She was there to come get _me_ , to look after me, don’t you dare try to tell me lies—“

“She was trying to kill Scott!” Stiles yells, suddenly right in her face. “And she almost succeeded before Derek got there, too! He was fucking _dying_ , Allison!”

Slowly shaking her head, Allison’s gaze flickers from him, to Stiles and then to Scott. She stares at him, mouth working silently. 

In the end, it’s not the sickening smell of distress that makes Derek suddenly drop to his knees beside Isaac even in the face of a possible bullet to the head. It’s not even the small sounds of pain his young Beta makes, or the way he tries to curl into himself. It’s the one word that tumbles from the boy’s pale lips that steals any choice from him.

“Alpha…”

Allison makes a small, hurt sound as she watches him take Isaac’s trembling hand. There are tears glittering in her eyes as, finally, she lowers the gun. Erica takes it in the blink of an eye, and shoves her back with a snarl. 

Allison doesn’t even seem to notice. Harsh sobs are wracking her small frame and she looks around wildly, as if searching for something, _anything_ to make it all better. It’s Boyd that pulls her over to Chris, and then the distinct sounds of ripping duct-tape and grief fill the room. 

Derek pays it no mind. “Bullet,” he hollers. 

Erica is already checking Allison’s gun. “It’s empty,” she says in a whisper.

“So are the others,” Scott moans, genuine pain in his voice. 

“I. I still have one.” 

Derek can’t really help the snarl that escapes at hearing Allison’s timid voice, but she doesn’t back down even in the face of his wolf, hand unwavering as she presents the one single bullet. “It was reserved for Derek.”

Isaac’s breath is slowing already, heartbeat fading and becoming erratic as the thick dark line closes in on his heart.

Derek doesn’t stop to think about the ramifications of this, ignores the sick feeling in his stomach and the way his sight narrows. All he can see is _Isaac dying_ and all rational thought flees. 

“You don’t get to leave me,” he hears himself growl as he hunkers down, face so close to Isaac’s that they’re sharing a breath. The boy’s eyes are wide and frightened, but the sheer terror in them abates a little when he sees Derek. It’s been awhile since Derek has known that feeling, but he remembers it well – that moment of letting go, of surrendering to the Alpha, sure in the knowledge that there is _someone_ that’ll be there always. Someone that would die and kill and fight for you until the very end. 

And that is when Derek realizes that he has no choice in this at all. He can’t just close his eyes and let go because these kids need _someone_ to take charge, preferably someone that isn’t Peter, and maybe even someone that knows what they are doing. In lieu of that, there is only one option left to him. He releases a shuddering breath that is echoes by Isaac, the two of them breathing in sync after a fashion.

Their hands are clasped between them, pressed to Derek’s chest as if he can make his own lifeforce bleed into the failing body of his first Beta by sheer will alone. Somewhere on the edge of his awareness, he senses Erica take apart the cursed bullet, hears the click of a lighter and then the stinging smell of burning wolfsbane fills his nose. 

He holds Isaac’s gaze, tightens his hold on him as Scott presses the handful of glowing ash into the sluggishly bleeding wound. Isaac wails as he strains away from the excruciating pain, pushing into Derek as if somehow that closeness will relieve it, will help. It doesn’t. Still that doesn’t stop Derek from slipping his free hand around the boy’s neck and use the grip to pull their foreheads together until Isaac’s frantic breathing slows and the stench of death recedes.

His hold slackens and, on impulse, he presses a chaste kiss between Isaac’s eyebrows. He doesn’t have the strength for anything else after that, so he tips himself forward in a not-very-controlled fall and rests against his Beta’s gently moving chest, fighting to stay awake.

“Derek?” 

Surprisingly, it’s Stiles that notices that something’s wrong. Leave it to the human with the very _un_ supernatural senses. There are hands trying to turn him around, but they slip, glide off the slickness saturating his dark shirt and Derek can hear Stiles gasp and say “Oh, crap,” under his breath, over and over again.

Agony envelops him as someone pokes the holes in his back, but when he seizes up and away, vomiting black slime, there are soft words in his ear and a damp cloth is being pressed to his forehead.

Derek fades in and out after that. He tries to stay, to tell them what they need to do, but the darkness and pain pull him under every time. The one time he manages to open his eyes, darkness surrounds him. There seems to be nobody with him, wherever he is, and he finds it appropriate that he will die alone. 

He closes his eyes and lets go.

 

* * * * 

 

As per normal, he wakes up fighting. Or at least he would, if his body wouldn’t betray him and behave like that of a ninety year-old with rheumatism. He slumps back with a moan, blinking up at the ceiling while taking stock. He is hurting, but not badly so, just as what he imagines a bad case of charley horse to be like.

There are people close by, but none of them read _threat_ to him. Their breathing is regular and deep. Asleep, most likely, or imitating it pretty well. He is warm, comfortable and the surface underneath him is soft. A bed then. And Stiles’ room, from the looks of it. Stiles’ bed, too and, most likely, Stiles himself nearby. 

The movement doesn’t surprise him, but what does is the hand that gently strokes back a stray lock of hair from his temple. He turns his head and looks directly into surprised brown eyes. They both freeze. Stiles doesn’t pull back right away like Derek expects him to, though. Instead, he smiles at Derek, honest emotion there for mere moments, before it’s quickly replaced by the familiar ironic half-smile. He gestures to the other side of the bed, where five dark shapes lay draped over various pieces of furniture.

“Oh, thank god,” Stiles says conversationally. “I was beginning to think you’d be hogging my bed forever.” 

It’s almost comical how five heads snap up in unison, smiles of various width appearing on faces as if conjured there. Isaac is virtually beaming at him. He looks better, Derek notes absently, tired maybe, but healthy. Erica almost tumbles off Boyd’s lap as she cranes her neck to get a better look at him, and Scott grins like a lunatic as he rubs the little drool-spot Allison has made there.

For all the facts that he has, Derek can’t quite seem to catch on. When he tries to speak though, to ask _why_ and _how_ , only a croak makes it out of his throat. 

“We’ve been taking turns watching over you,” Stiles answers as if he’d spoken. He hands Derek a glass of water, waits till he drains it and fills it up again.

Derek is taken aback. “Why?”

Stiles rolls his eyes. “And _that_ is why you guys need me. Honestly, do werewolfs come in emotionally stunted only or is your pack the special edition?”

That hits a bit closer to home than Derek wants to admit. 

Grimacing, Stiles takes the empty glass from him. “They were worried about you. And so was I by the way. Don’t do that again, okay? That selfless heroically dying thing is way overrated if you ask me.”

“Yeah,” Scott says, accusingly and punches him in the shoulder. Hard. “That was for mumbling all that stuff about me having to be the one kill you. What kind of asshole asks that of a friend, huh?”

The words _We’re not friends_ die on his tongue before they make it out. 

“You’re so obvious,” Stiles says, but he’s grinning and kind of rolling his eyes and Isaac is giving him a smile that is both shy and challenging, and maybe, just maybe, there is something here for Derek after all.


End file.
